Beth Moore - The Unexpected Gift of Disillusionment
1 Peter chapter 1:1 through 9. Just as I read it to you, let how profound it is fall down deep into your bones and into the marrow. "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ: To those chosen, living as exiles dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with Jesus Christ's blood".
Now go with him in verse 3. It says, after saying, "May grace and peace be multiplied to you": "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God's power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith, more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ".
Verses 8 and 9: "Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with an inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls". As he says in that portion, and I'm glancing from 3 to 9, he doesn't just talk about the mercy of God, but the great mercy. Not just about hope, but of a living hope. He stacks up three different adjectives for our inheritance that is waiting for us. It is imperishable, undefiled, unfading. He doesn't just speak of time, but he speaks of a short time. He doesn't just say joy, but he talks about a joy that is inexpressible and glorious.
I want you to think about what that might mean to have inexpressible joy. I don't know if you have ever been so thrilled over something, so filled with wonder perhaps, at the grandeur of God across a mountain range or a sunset, whatever it might be, a time of worship where you're just nearly overcome, and it seems like that what you sense inside of you or around you is somehow beyond what you could describe with your words. Joy, inexpressible and glorious. This is coming from the apostle Peter. It sounds like the kind of enthusiasm we might expect from, say, a first-year worship leader or maybe those first couple of years where it's just like, man, a honeymoon period of the walk of faith. Or it sounds like maybe something we would hear from a group of college students that had just left a Passion event in January in Atlanta, Georgia. It sounds like something that would come early on in a faith walk.
But what I want you to know and what will be the major point of our message today is that, quite to the contrary, this is a man who has now walked out his faith for 30 solid years. It's been 30 years or around that from the time that Jesus was crucified and he rose from the dead. So this is Peter who had walked with him all of that time, seeing him and not seeing him, having known what it was like to touch his flesh and having known what it was like to see him transfigured and then to see him lifted off the mountain and ascending into the clouds. This was the apostle Peter, believed to have been written about somewhere around 60, 61, 62 because he would have been martyred around 64 or 65 AD.
So we're talking about a time when it was early on. He speaks of persecution, it appears to be fairly early on when Nero's rule was coming down heavy and hard on Christians. And so that's about the timeframe. And what I want to tell you is nothing could be more exciting than seeing the faith of someone who's had a little time to talk about something they truly believe. Don't we really know, can't we tell, can't our spirits bear witness, when we hear the testimony of somebody who knows of what he speaks. Peter knew of what he spoke. Masterful words, very dense with doctrine, and yet gurgling with feeling, 30 years in. You know, I don't have to tell you because you know it, you operate around faith communities perhaps much of the time, and you know that we are living in a time not only in the church but in the nation, in many parts of the world, where we live by these false dichotomies.
And it certainly applies to the church because you will hear people that will pit intellectual kind of approach to theology and faith opposed to sometimes something that they would consider to be emotionalism or just simply feeling. It happens all the time. You'll hear someone wanting to make, they'll say, "Well, I'm trying to find a new church, but I don't want an emotional church. I want to find one that is intellectual". Others will go, "You know what, I'm not into that. I want to feel something". And what we've done is press in these false dichotomies to something when God was going, "You know what wholeness is? Wholeness is when I come and overtake all of you, your mind and your heart. Everything that is in you".
Because with the apostle Peter, who could not possibly have known him better as far as living flesh and blood, just completely human, but indwelt by the Holy Spirit, this was a man who knew his doctrine, and yet you also see him speak of a hope that is living, of a love that, in Paul's words, would be incorruptible. "Love divine, all loves excelling," the hymnist wrote. You also see what he calls an inexpressible and glorious joy. And he is so filled with it that he is translating that as something that is also true of his reader and perhaps when he was inspired to write these words, everyone he was writing to felt all of those things. You do not see him, but you believe in him. You do not see him, but you love him and you are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
But some of us today might scoot into this and go, "Well, I mean, I wish that I were, but I can't say I feel that way about it". But you know what it's like because you've felt that way. You've felt so strongly about something, maybe been such a fan of a football team or some kind of sports team, whatever it may, you're so into it that you are absolutely positive that everyone else feels exactly the same way. I so love to study that when I'm with a group of women and we're getting into the Word of God and we're getting into the weeds, and then we're getting into the weeds of the weeds and then the weeds of the weeds of the weeds, and I'll look at them and go, "Is there any bigger blast than this"?
And you know, half of them are going, "Yes. I can think of a lot bigger blasts than this". But I feel it so much, so overtaken by it, that I think you feel exactly the same way. That was Peter. That was Peter. Through that gospel lens, that same living hope, love divine and exuberant joy, a man who knew of what he spoke. Here's what I want to tell you because this is such, can be, if we'll allow it to be, such encouragement for us, because it is so late in after he's experienced so much. Because some of you perhaps feel like you've lived past those days, that your day as a really fiery faith, that was before you actually lived some life, that when you would have felt that kind of exuberant joy was when you thought it was going to all look like this. And then here's Peter, defying every single bit of that.
Paul would have done the same. John would have done the same. Peter didn't grow out of it. He actually grew into it. Paul didn't grow out of it. He actually grew into it. In fact, here is part of what I want to build on today in this message. I'd like to suggest to you that what Peter is describing, what we hear of him in verses 3 through 9, would not even be something that could be said from the heart of someone with authenticity whose faith had not been tested and tried. A person in that honeymoon phase of their faith, I don't believe, could write those same words even if they felt all the exuberance of a newcomer coming into the first realizations of so great a salvation. No, this had to come from someone who had been there. This was years after the first martyr among the apostles. Years after imprisonments, beatings, everything we can imagine, this coming from this pen.
And so the name of my message today is "The Unexpected Gift of Disillusionment". And here's what I want to tell you. Over the last couple of years, if I were to look up one word that most stands out all the way to day before yesterday, when my assistant handed me a letter that had come for me, the moment that I opened it, it was the first word I saw: "disillusioned," disillusioned. The number one word. If I had to come up with one word that would have been the common denominator of more letters than I can count, more direct messages than I can count, more conversations that I've either been a part of or have overheard, it would be that one. Disillusioned about a whole lot of things. For one thing, we know so much, we have so much information, that there's so much more to be disillusioned about.
A lot of people disillusioned in their faith. A lot of people disillusioned in their communities. I want you to imagine with me how much of this would have applied to Peter. How much disillusionment he would have encountered with others, with himself, with Jesus, with the plan, you name it. And so here's what I wanna say to you today: if you have been disillusioned with others, with Jesus, with yourself, with the plan, if it's not going like you pictured it, you are in the right place today. And I might like to suggest you are in the right place, period, if we will take an honest journey with Christ.
I want you to go with me to a couple of places where we see the apostle Peter in action. These are going to be some that if you have been churched for very long, these will be familiar to you, but I want to drum them back up because we don't want to separate that man from this man. Same guy. So turn with me from 1 Peter to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16. You perhaps know a little bit of the context already. Jesus is asking his disciples, they've been out and about now, and he wants to know who are people saying that I am? And they say, "Well, some are saying you're Elijah, some John the Baptist, some Jeremiah, or other prophets". And so he asked them the question that at one time or another comes to all of us: "But who do you say that I am"?
And so Simon Peter answers in verse 16: "'You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus responds," listen carefully, "'Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.' Then he gave the disciples orders to tell no one that he was the Messiah. From then on Jesus began to point out to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised on the third day. Peter," same guy, "took him aside and began to rebuke him".
I just want you to just, like, if you looked up the original Greek for rebuke, I bet it means rebuke. He took him literally. I want you to picture with me, he's preaching this and teaching this to them, and here comes Peter going, "Could I talk to you just a moment"? Because you know, after all the keys, the key. Have you ever given the keys to somebody who wasn't ready to drive? You know what I'm talking about? I mean like, keys. He's been the star of the class. Obviously, the Lord is inspiring what he knows, and he knows that can't be the route.
And so what he says to Jesus is: "Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to you"! And you talk about a moment that he never would have forgotten as long as he lived. Jesus flips around and says, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me because you're not thinking about God's concerns but human concerns". Isn't this us or maybe it's just me, but where you think, "Oh, I'm brilliant". And a couple of paragraphs later, you're an idiot. I mean, an absolute idiot, like a buffoon. And it's like, "What even happened here"? And you've been embarrassed in front of the same class that you were exalted in, you have now been humbled in. And you feel like an idiot, but you're thinking like, "Wait".
Do you know how many times he must have replayed that? I mean, surely Jesus meant that metaphorically? No, no, he really meant beating and killed, but then also raised. "No, this shall never happen to you". If we know the basic storyline of the Gospel, we already know a couple of things about Peter. He is bold, if not completely brash. He was one of those that was always talking when he should have been listening. We're just one chapter over, just right there in Matthew 17, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John onto a high mountain apart and he is transfigured there before them. And they see that Elijah and Moses appear and they're talking with Jesus. Can you even imagine this?
And Matthew's Gospel does not tell us about what, but Luke's Gospel does tell us, and it's telling us and it even uses that word that looks like Exodus to us, talking to Jesus about his departure, his Exodus. It's the most powerful thing, but here in all of this moment, this gorgeous moment, when they're talking with one another, all of a sudden, Peter comes up with, "I have a great idea. Why don't we build three tents up here? One for you, one for you, one for you". You know what, this was not the three in one. No, this was Moses, this was Elijah, this over here, this is the one and only Jesus. Well now, he would not have been able to have foreseen anything that we would have considered to be transfiguring. But that was a man who had been taught from the time he was a Hebrew little boy that God had spoken out of the cloud. And I mean God spoke, comes thundering out of the cloud, going, "This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him"!
Here's what I wanna suggest to you, that when Peter was taking Jesus to the side to rebuke him for even thinking, remotely thinking that he would be hurt like that and that he would be killed like that. After all, he is the Messiah. What I'd like to suggest to you is he was a man of faith, but his faith was naive. His faith was not yet grounded in the truth. It was naive faith and trust in something that he had misinterpreted by actual nature. So if we were disillusioned, if some of our illusions were loose from us, what I wanna say to you is amen to that because we're not after naive faith and trust. We're after steadfast faith and trust.
We're after sturdy trust. We're after the kind of standing that Paul describes in Ephesians chapter 6 when he says, "So that you may stand and having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore, stand therefore". We're not talking about a thread, but a rope to an anchor beyond the veil, remembering that our faith is based on fact. These disciples did not go to the death, and horrific deaths, many of them, without renouncing Jesus because they did not believe fully in the fact of what they had seen and known. Love of an illusion is no love at all. It's a fantasy. Hope in an illusion is not a living hope. It's hitching our wagon to a star and the hook breaks. And don't miss that reference to joy, unspeakable and glorious joy.
Now, in the New Testament, that word "glory" would mean all the things that we think it does and all the things it does in the Old Testament, but also in the Old Testament it was about weight, that something, like, if you took gold coins and you set them on a weight, how heavy are they, how full of glory are they, of worth? And glorious joy is that which is like, I mean, it has been invested in. It's got substance to it, so it's not flighty. It also does not exist somehow independently from all the difficulties and trials of life.
I want you to look at this portion in 1 Peter that says so that these fiery trials come to you, so that the character of your faith may be proven genuine. And you know, I don't know, I want you to just go with me here for a minute. I don't know if you're there right now, but I bet you have been at some point in your life, if you have any years on you at all, where you have broken someone's trust, and it can happen a whole lot of ways, you've broken someone's trust and you want back in their trust. You're sorry, and you really are, but you want them to trust you based on your words. Does anybody know what I'm saying? Where you go, "But you can trust me". You know what, all these promises you're making, you've already made them once and you didn't do it.
And the point that I want to make is that when it comes to things like genuine faith and trust, those things have to be proved over time. They're not instantaneous. Our words, where this is concerned, our words are cheap. It takes time to grow like that. It's God that proves it. We can't prove for ourselves that we are different than we used to be. All we can do is let God prove that we are different than we used to be. That part of us, I want you to think about what he was doing with Peter.
Remember when he was letting him go through those fiery trials at that charcoal fire and denying him three times. What is he doing? Just proving him a fraud? I don't think so. I think he's surfacing the fraud so that it can get down below to what is true. And as long as Peter believed his own fraudulence and his own falsity and his own fake, he was never going to get down to that. He had to build up a man of real character and that was going to take time and it was going to take fire. It was going to take challenges, and then he built a man that could say, "living hope, divine love, inexpressible and glorious joy".
We want people to take us at our word, and he's going like, "I want to do better than that. I tell you what, you trust me," because here's what we want to do. We want to promise people we're gonna be faithful. And God said, "You know what I need you to do? I need you to have faith in my promises because I'm the one gonna get you through that. I'm the one that's gonna prove that you have got what it takes to walk with integrity, because my Holy Spirit dwells in you". We've come to demand immediacy from every engagement. We want a problem to go and he wants his people to grow.
We want what's broken to fix; he wants what's broken to mend. We want to just already know it and he wants us to learn it. We want him to just tell us and he's going, "I'll teach you. I'll teach you". 'Cause it took us a long time to develop those illusions and it's going to take us a while to get over them. But if we're honest, if we're honest in our walk, because I'm gonna tell you something. What is also dishonest: it is also not true that everything will always turn out to be trash, everything's always gonna go wrong, everything will always go wrong for you. That is also a total illusion. The fact of it is we are going somewhere glorious and wonderful, and we have a living hope and the certainty of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And on our way there, there is some suffering and pain. But if we'll stay honest in our journey, we will, just like Peter did, according to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. When Jesus came back from the dead, it said, "Before he revealed himself to the rest of the twelve, he showed himself to Peter". Odd thing, isn't it? 'Cause we think, "Well, he did that because Peter was already a man of faith". Well, Paul was a man of such skewed faith, it wasn't even funny. Look at the faithfulness of God on an honest journey, on an honest journey. If you will let him and I will let him, he will take even that cynicism of ours that sometimes we have to go through and he will see to it that he is revealed in such a way that he proves that inner cynic in us a liar.